Coven - Part 5

Korky is in a Jimboomba with a Roscoe Lunchpack. She cannot remember a history that this particular Roscoe Lunchpack says he has lived and it doesn’t help that she now sees everything from the unique perspective of a highly individual worldview existing only for her. Everything around Korky is a cruel distortion of her expectations and the analogy of watching a State of Origin match between a NSW stochastic grain vignette and a Queensland radical opinion on the life and works of Brueghel the Elder springs to mind - and then, thankfully, springs out again before it can gain too firm a footing.

Have you ever wondered why a lot of the action in these stories happens in Jimboomba? It’s because the blog author lives near there and very seldom goes anywhere else. Now is that bloody sad or what? Pathetic really, but there you go. And I’m still pissed off about the hole I’ve dug for myself on this Coven thing. I mean, you would think I would start making a little plan wouldn’t you? Before I run off at the keyboard I should sit down and write up the bones of a plot. But no. Too bloody easy, that is. It’s as if I challenge myself with the most stupid thing I can think of on the spur of the moment and then say, “Get out of that then”. You wouldn’t do it like that, would you? Just imagine going up to a perfect stranger in the street – it doesn’t have to be a stranger, it could be your best friend or your daughter or the chap that stands outside the supermarket talking to himself, anybody really – and saying something like “My carriage awaits beyond the woodlice, how say you Breadsneezer?” The other person – friend, relative or stranger, doesn’t matter which – says “What do you mean?” and then you have to justify the remark (actually it was a question not a remark - or more accurately, both - but you know what I mean). You’d be completely Dorised wouldn’t you? And deservedly so. Why would you say something like that and bring all that grief down on yourself? You would say something sensible, something thought out. Even if you couldn’t speak you wouldn’t bother imagining saying crap like that. Even if you’d had your vocal cords removed and could only speak by using one of those mechanical things that make you sound like Stephen Hawking you wouldn’t waste the batteries saying something like that, would you? So why do I do it? It’s got me Dorised, I can tell you. God, I’m bored today.

Roscoe continues with his story of the last 8 years and Korky fights to stop the whirling in her head.

Roscoe Lunchpack: After the Lin Emhall incident the public turned right against us. McDuck and Rugarse were stirring as hard as they could until a State enquiry was set up. The upshot was the council was dismissed and McDuck and Rugarse were given the green light to form The Bogan Protectorate as an interim local authority. It was so successful in the first year the Protectorate became permanent and is now looked upon as a superior local government model that’s being considered for the rest of Australia.

Korky: How was it so successful?

Roscoe Lunchpack: Revenue. Bogan contributes more to State and Federal coffers than any other authority. It used to be local government going cap in hand to the big boys but not in Bogan.

Korky: So how is it done?

Roscoe Lunchpack: Simple. Everything that makes profit is legal - drugs, prostitution, gambling, banking and insurance. Everything that costs money is eradicated. The moneymaking schemes are imaginative. Just take my own area at the Military Police Academy. We devised a system for gathering speeding fine revenue faster than ever before. Every road in Bogan is speed rated at 5am each day. The rating is random and no warnings are issued and there are no signs. The rating can vary between 5 kph and 200 kph and anyone caught above or below the limit by more than 2% gets an automatic fine of 20% of the driver’s weekly income.

Korky: 2% of 5 kph? How do you do that?

Roscoe Lunchpack: We don’t, we just err on the side of the government.

Korky: Christ, the prisons will be packed with people that can’t pay.

Roscoe Lunchpack: Not really, prisons cost money. There are only two punishments under the law for anyone unable to meet a legal commitment and that’s death or permanent hard labour (slavery if we’re honest about it) and that seems to do the trick. If it’s death, we sell the organs on ebay and if it’s hard labour, we hire the criminal out to local industry. The sentence given depends on the state of the labour market at the time.

Of course, no system is perfect. We had a guy last week who successfully appealed the death sentence for ‘non-compliance with a rated speed’ because he was stopped at the traffic lights when he was booked. The trouble was, he had a very rare blood group and we’d already sold his kidneys for 3.5 million so we got him for being in possession of stolen property and shot him anyway. Look, Korky, rather than tell you all this it would be easier to show you. Let’s go on the Bogan World Tour, follow me.

(Roscoe heads back across Cusack Lane and Korky follows. When they reach the top of the ramp beside Mitre 10, Roscoe turns and indicates a landscape of blood red flowers stretching off to the south as far as the eye can see. Roscoe tells Korky the vast poppy fields of Cedar Grove are tended by toddlers rented out by the Bogan Kindergarten Cooperative. The children work from 5-30am until 6pm when their parents are released from the Opium Processing Plant built on the site of the old Jimboomba primary school. From the processing plant the refined heroin is shipped each day to the many “Horse Trader” kiosks that, for security reasons and to be close to their best customers, are usually positioned inside Bogan’s police stations.

Continuing the tour, Roscoe relates the story of the Woolies Riots of 2010. During the great economic down turn the Big Two comprising Woolworth and Coles were in fierce competition for share price. Each tried to outdo the other in price hikes to increase profitability and share value. They were confident in their joint monopoly of the food market and they squeezed the consumer to the point of malnutrition. In November 2010 Woolworth increased the price of milk and bread by 200% and the first window was smashed. Within one week Woolies was an empty, shattered ruin and Coles had been burnt to the ground. 87 people died in the food riots and during the following weeks hundreds more, mostly children and the elderly, starved to death. A few days later the BP service station was dynamited closely followed by the destruction of every other service station in Bogan. Cars were abandoned and ablaze. Every shop was looted and torched. The streets were filled with screaming, chanting rioters and the police cowered inside while the world of Bogan fell apart. It was at this point that the Bogan Council held the emergency meeting where Lin Emhall stood up to them. Shortly afterwards The Protectorate came to power, the army moved into Bogan and 7,238 starving residents were slaughtered before peace was finally restored.

Korky and Roscoe paused before what had once been Woolworth’s supermarket but now a garish, pink cake of a building stood there. It was so grotesque and obviously intended to be in the worst of taste that Korky couldn’t help comparing the structure to the architectural abominations of Las Vegas. It had crenulated purple towers and crudely moulded gargoyles. Plastic jasmine wound about its pink stucco walls and the exposed fibreglass beams supporting a roof of green glazed tiles. An enormous black display screen in a gilded piecrust frame was hung between the towers. The screen was blank now but at night it flashed its message of false promise to jaded patrons everywhere. Lurid posters advertised the delights of 2-up, Poker, Blackjack and Roulette. Other posters had photographs of showgirls in gaudy costumes who were claimed to be the most beautiful girls in Bogan but could only possibly hope to impress farm boys who have spent the last 2 years alone with cattle. The place was a dive, a nasty little back-street nightclub thrust to the front and forced upon a community robbed of self-respect. It was Andy McDucks nightclub where he and the Bogan ‘beautiful people’ went to be seen and to stridently reassure each other they were the biggest floaters in the cesspit that Bogan had become.

Next, Korky was led to Roscoe’s pride and joy - The Military Police Academy. Blue jowled trolls lumbered round the combat courses smashing, slashing and shooting whimpering convicted felons. Torture classes competed in the, so far, hopeless quest to keep a victim living long enough to scream and the competitors chuckled and joshed each other in the spirit of friendly rivalry every time they failed. Other classes taught the trolls to read and to operate the speed guns that blared the order to stop in 20 languages simultaneously. They also learned to set the rate of fire for the explosive shells the speed guns fired if a driver ignored the stop instruction or was confused or partially deaf.

But the greatest challenge to the trolls was learning the hundreds of spot fine regulations covering everything from refusing a police raffle ticket to littering a public place. The story is often told of a waiter at a police convention who was carrying a tray of drinks across the room. The waiter suffered from severe dandruff and the litter fines bankrupted him before he reached the other side of the room where he was shot for impecuniosity.

The difficulty in finding a police troll capable of remembering more than a couple of regulations led to the ‘general spot fine’ regulation being adopted which allowed an officer to impose a $1000 spot fine on ‘the suspicion that a regulation may apply for which an on the spot fine is applicable.’ Those that dispute the fine are only able to recover the money by going through a lengthy appeal process giving the authorities time to find a suitable regulation or devise a new one that invariably doubles the fine already imposed.

After the Academy visit, Roscoe paused briefly in the Jimboomba Library filled with books nobody read any more and showed Korky the Lin Emhall Shrine. Lin stood forlornly in his dusty glass case and his polished plastic eyes stared out at a public that once hailed him as a Champion and ‘The Man They Couldn’t Gag’ but after the events that followed his outburst the fickle fans cursed him as a troublemaker and wished he’d kept his sodding trap shut.

Korky left the library and wandered into the old school playing fields. She was profoundly distressed and filled with a dread she couldn’t identify properly. There were suddenly so many things to fear it was difficult to manage her emotions. She couldn’t cry, she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t really think. Her world was twisted by a cancer so aggressive it even fed on itself and she couldn’t see the source of it. Life had become the disease that threatened its own existence and somewhere in this grotesque world a clock was counting down. But still Korky hoped and tried to calm her spirit with the view of silent paddocks and waving grass and jutting, blackened stakes.)

Roscoe Lunchpack: Ah, you’ve found the Field of Stars.

Korky: Is that what you call it now? It used to be the school playing fields. Why ‘Field of Stars”? Sounds nice.

Roscoe Lunchpack: It’s because of the thousands of star pickets you can see stuck in the ground. That was where the heads of the food rioters were impaled back in 2010 as a warning to others. We still use them for serious criminals but there aren’t many of those now. Not since they legalised murder and rape anyway. We should get back now. It’s getting dark and you don’t want to be shot for being out after the legal light limit.

Korky: How dark is that?

Roscoe Lunchpack: Depends on the officer’s opinion.

(They walk back to a well-lit area overlooking the old Woolies car park. Korky watches the crowds beginning to gather for the evening’s entertainment. She doesn’t recognise anyone.)

Korky: Do you see any of the old councillors these days?

Roscoe Lunchpack: Oh yes, I see them all. Well, all of them except Fondleschaft of course.

Korky: Why not Fondleschaft?

Roscoe Lunchpack: Ah, it was a bad time after the Council was disbanded. We were used to scheming, fiddling, plenty of money. You remember what it was like, Korky. We were important people. It was hard to be nobodies again. Then Shizeknicker had an idea. She was always looking for the angles and she said people needed something to believe in and the best thing to do was to start a new religion. It seemed like a good idea. Money, power, influence, everything we wanted – so we looked into it. Then Bean made a joke about there being 13 of us, just enough for a coven of witches so why not make the religion Witchcraft – Devil Worship? We thought – why not?

Korky: You formed a Dorising coven?

Roscoe Lunchpack: Yes. What a hoot, eh? But it worked. Hardly any outlay, just a few black cloaks and pointy hats. I had the contacts with my job in The Academy so we could scare the shit out of anybody we needed to. We just made up a few mumbo jumbo ceremonies, had a few rallies and the money started pouring in. It was just like the old days again. Well, it was until Andy McDuck stuck his oar in.

Korky: He tried to stop you?

Roscoe Lunchpack: Stop us? Like Doris he did. The bastard wanted IN. We were making more money than he was from The Protectorate AND his stupid nightclub. We told him he couldn’t be part of it because our rules said there had to be 13 only on The Coven Council. The next day Fondleschaft was found face down in a ditch and ‘face down’ was spot on; it was just his head, they never found the rest of him.

Korky: So now McDuck is part of The Coven is he?

Roscoe Lunchpack: Part of it? He’s the Chairman, Head Cook and King Incarnate. The oily swine struts about the place in his Armani suit and his $1000 shoes. He calls all the shots and takes most of the money. The big ‘I am’. He slithers around the stage of his shitty nightclub singing Wiggles songs and selections from Sound of Music and Oklahoma. He just loves it. Thinks of himself as a socialite. A fashion guru. A fat, flaccid David Beckham, that’s all he is. And he insists everyone calls him Dandy Andy. What a prick!

Korky: He’s called Dandy Andy? That’s what you said? Dandy Andy?

Roscoe Lunchpack: Oh yes. Dandy bleeding Andy. He even named his crappy nightclub after that. See, it’s opening now. Look at the sign.

(The black screen between the towers bursts into life. A cartoon figure like the Johnny Walker logo in top hat and tails marches across the screen and then two bright orange words begin to flash on and off, on and off.)

THE DANDY. THE DANDY. THE DANDY. THE DANDY.

TO BE CONTINUED.